Outcomes of Clinical Nursing Practice Guideline for Decreasing Depressive Symptom in Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to develop clinical nursing practice guideline for decreasing depressive symptoms in the patients with major depressive disorder. The study compared depressive symptoms of the patients after intervention of the clinical practice guideline with the symptoms before intervention. Twenty patients with major depressive disorders were recruited to be the samples at the Outpatient department of Srithanya hospital during 1 October 2007 - 31 May 2008. The research instrument consisted of: 1) clinical nursing practice guideline for decreasing depressive symptoms in the patients with major depressive disorder; 2) Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) with reliability of 0.86 validated by three experts. All data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. After treatment followed the clinical nursing practice guideline for 1 and 3 months, the scores in BDI of all of the patients with major depressive disorders in this study decreased. The result of the study confirmed that the clinical nursing practice guideline could reduce depressive symptoms in the patients with major depressive disorders and showed the possibility to implement in the practice setting.